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Dear Diary #18.

1. Don’t wear your new Vince sweater to a Halloween party and act sad when someone spills wine on your bougie ass.

2. Also don’t pretend like that Vince sweater wasn’t a hand-me-down from your mother.

3. When you feel like you’re going to start crying on an airplane because–despite being high in the sky where everything should feel lighter– everything just feels REALLY heavy–well, just don’t.

4. Do not under any circumstances lock eyes with the creepy married man on your flight who appears to be tracking your every move.

5. Trying to write in your journal on the airplane is an incredibly awkward endeavor–first because penmanship is a dying art and everyone will glare at you and your pretension; second because your neighbor will try to read your writing (not that you can entirely blame him).

6. Not everyone in your life wants to hear about how cold you are and how you have to pee every second of every day.

8. Hyde Park’s delayed gentrification and resulting awesome cafes and restaurants are not a personal offense.

9. Try not to let your inner fifteen year old who needs to be right about everything come out so often around your mother.

10. Learn how to not overpack by at least 50% every time you go away for a long weekend. You are not going to wear that skirt that’s too big, those jeans that are uncomfortably tight, or that ugly sweater from the 80s.

11. Be thankful you’re not the woman melting down and aggressively cutting everyone in the security line–but know that that woman totally exists inside of you.

12. Like, you bitterly thinking to yourself “that asshole thinks the rules don’t apply to her” is the most ironic.

13. Don’t drink wine that tastes like grape juice and expect to like yourself or feel remotely alive the next day.

14. Try to feel less inadequate around med school students who whip up a full blown dinner spread for their intimate Halloween cocktail parties where everyone has civilized conversation and casually mentions their “husband” or “wife” like it’s normal.

15. (Because I mean that’s actually kind of a nightmare.)

16. Don’t pretend that you find babies cuter for longer than two minutes every six months.

17. But do be disgusted by people who act personally offended by the presence of children. Those people suck.

18. Stop forgetting that the regular consumption of protein makes you happier/less awful to spend time with.

19. When you openly don’t enjoy spending time with someone, you’re not allowed to be upset that it’s mutual.

20. Stop spending so much time thinking about saying things, and just SAY THEM. It’s unhealthy to keep all those Lifetime movies inside of you.

21. When there’s a hole in the center-ass area of your leggings and you know it, you should not keep wearing them in public. They’re like 50 cents at H&M dude.

22. Telling each of your friends that you’re SO glad they came to your reading a good twelve times is really unnecessary and borderline annoying. Keep those excess feels to yourself.

23. When in doubt, self-deprecate.

24. Attractiveness–cool and fleeting. Not a good sell if the person doesn’t feel like home, or someone you could get kind of fat around.

25. Speaking of which, “I could get fat around you” = not something you should consider actually saying.

26. Just because certain friends aren’t comfortable expressing non-sarcastic emotion, doesn’t mean they won’t show up for you time and time again, or that they don’t love you as much as they do Larry David.

27. “Hey I wanted to reach out and say thanks again since last night I was a blubbering idiot who couldn’t do more than nod her head repeatedly like a spaztic dog,” is a good way to start an e-mail.

28. Trail mix is the blue balls of the snack world. Well, unless it’s made by your father who loads it with chocolate. And apologies to Freud for mentioning balls and my father in the same sentence.

29. When you bump into someone abruptly on the subway after it stops short, and they shoot you a look which screams “I want you dead,” a good thing to do is laugh in their face and give them a card for a therapist. But probably only if you’re drunk.

29. Casual public discussion of UTIs and taking stool softeners is how you know it’s real. And, so, I guess you’re stuck with your best friends.